Gunmen killed nine members of two Shia families in Baghdad today, police said, a day after militias raided a mixed neighbourhood and forced dozens of Sunni families to flee in an escalation of sectarian violence.
Police said about 20 gunmen killed a father and three sons of one Shia family and five brothers of another after storming their homes in a mostly Sunni area in southwestern Baghdad.
The father was a Shia policeman, police said. Two of the victims of the other family had common Shia names. One Interior Ministry source confirmed one of the two families killed was Shia.
But another ministry source said relatives who claimed the bodies were Sunni. The attack came a day after gangs of Shia militiamen burned homes and killed at least two people in broad daylight in the religiously mixed Hurriya district in western Baghdad, officials and witnesses said.
Dozens of Sunni families, including women and children, fled Hurriya on foot and in trucks at nightfall in one of the worst incidents of sectarian cleansing in the capital in weeks. Interior Ministry sources said they found three headless bodies in Hurriya today.
Iraq has been in the grip of a cycle of killings and reprisals pitting majority Shias against once-dominant Sunnis since the bombing of a Shi'ite shrine in February.
US officials have warned that attacks by Sunni al-Qaeda militants and Shia militias threaten to tear Iraq apart.